Steffen Schleiermacher

Steffen Schleiermacher, pianist, composer, festival and concert promoter, born in Halle in 1960. He studied piano (Gerhard Erber), composition (Siegfried Thiele, Friedrich Schenker) and conducting (Günter Blumhagen) at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy of Music in Leipzig from 1980 until 1985. He was master pupil for composition with Friedrich Goldmann at the Academy of Arts in Berlin during 1986/87 and for piano with Aloys Kontarsky at the Cologne Academy of Music during 1989/90.

Steffen Schleiermacher has concertized as a soloist with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Deutsche Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Münchner Philharmoniker, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and other orchestras under Vladimir Ashkenazy, Friedrich Goldmann, Ingo Metzmacher, Wladimir Jurowski and Fabio Luisi. Schleiermacher's recordings amount to more than 80 CDs (e.g. the first recording of the complete piano works by John Cage) with different labels such as Hat Art, Wergo, MDG.

Concert tours have taken him throughout numerous European, South American and Far Eastern countries. Since 1988 he is in charge of the 'musica nova' series at the Gewandhaus Leipzig, in 1989 he founded the Ensemble Avantgarde. He led the January Festival at the Museum of the Fine Arts in Leipzig from 1993 until 2000 and the annual festival 'KlangRausch' at the Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk from 2000 until 2010.

Recent commissions include 'Nach Markus. Passion' for the Bach-Festival Leipzig.

At present Steffen Schleiermacher is working on compositions for the Gewandhausorchestra Leipzig

Schleiermacher's numerous prizes and fellowship awards include the Gaudeamus Competition (1985), Eisler Prize (1986), Kranichstein Music Prize (1986), Christoph and Stephan Kaske Foundation Prize, Munich (1991), Fellowship of the German Academy at the Villa Massimo in Rome (1992), Japan Foundation Fellowship (1997), Fellowship of the Cité des Arts in Paris (1999) and Chevalier des artes et letters (2010), 6x Echo Classic Awards